Yeah, that's me. The Pendleton is sacred, man.
For me, Dudeism is like a big reset button to life, and it does this in ways that other religions don't seem to do.
Even if we consider Daoism, especially religious Daoism, it has largely lost touch with the Sage wisdom. It has lost connection with the heart of Daoism, and it's all got confused with a mixture of other religious grandeur, pomp, and ceremony, and it is full of experts.
How can you be an expert in something that is everything?
The same could be said of any of the world's big religions.
But that's a question for another time.
Dudeism is a Reminder to Chill the Fuck Out
...and to step off the full-speed achiever train. To ease back. To notice when the mind is uptight, and to breathe out all the bullshit.
It's like a compass that returns me to true North. True Dude.
And I'm pretty mellow, man.
But still, my job is about serving people who want to achieve, want to make that cool million+, and can be pretty intense about doing so. My home life can also be demanding. And it's easy to get lost in the middle of it all, to start sinking into the sea of other people's demands and expectations.
And Dudeism, well it reminds me to pull back. To reduce the number of my clients if things are getting too tense. To take less money, but have more time to support my family, and just to be there, man. For them, and myself.
And being self-employed makes it more difficult. And Deadbeat Genius, well that's a fun thing for me. It's a blog more than a store because I feel compelled to write about it. I don't know where the compulsion comes from or the words.
But I'm just gonna keep on rolling with it as it comes.
My Experience of Dudeism vs Other Religions
So, here's the score, and maybe you'll start to get why I dig Dudeism so much.
Back in 2007, I joined a Buddhist group. It said it was a Zen group, but I later realised it was more of a self-help place than Zen. And I didn't need self-help, I was just attracted to meditation, and Zen practice to fit alongside my Aikido practice.
In 2009, I experienced an Awakening. Completely out of the blue, and it turned my life on its head. I suddenly experienced that I wasn't "me", that what I had thought of as being my "self" had been a lie, and everything that I was looking at was the same, it was really all One.
So, I was in this Buddhist group listening to people telling their woes when some of them really should have been going to therapy, and I was listening to answers and thinking, well that's not what Buddha meant. I remember a woman grieving over the death of her father and saying that she couldn't abide by how Buddha explained that we should all accept change and that change is inevitable, and if we can't abide by it, we will never have peace.
So, she had a double-whammy: the pain of grief, and on top of that, the feeling that her Buddhism was letting her down in her hour of need.
And I thought, how can I tell her that the Buddha was also referring to the point that nothing changes? That the world before us is the apparent change of the Changeless. That her father, was not her father but the Absolute appearing at that time as him? That wouldn't help either. And if that doesn't help, and all of the teachers teaching Buddhism here didn't know either, then what were we all blathering about?
So, I gave this up. I took a year out to be in nature.
After that year, I joined a Daoist group and went on a few weekend retreats, but they got seriously uptight about my walking through a forest when I should have been doing meditation.
And they refused to let me return unless I spent around 5 hours a day in a closed-up meditation hall. What, when there are beautiful forest paths here? How can you be teaching Daoism when you are getting pissed at that?
Then by chance, I met some Druids, and they seemed really quite chilled, and also into the whole underachieving, back-to-nature thing. But I'm not into all the ceremony shit, and waving staffs around, and getting all pagan. Though I did love the people I still keep in touch with them.
Druidry has become more about what I cook, and how I bring healing elements to a meal, it is my learning of herbalism, and it feels like my time in my wild garden. But nothing else. Perhaps, I am a Hedge Druid, a loner.
Still, I kept seeing Dudeism. Like it was waving at me from the corner of my eye. I watched The Big Lebowski movie, and I thought it was fun, but not much more. Then later (in 2017) I became a Dudeist priest and it began to have more value to me.
And that's because of the old reset button.
And you know, I see that I cannot have just one religion when I am That which is all. So, there's a bit of it all in me and what I do. Central to it all is stillness - and that isn't owned by a religion.
Dudeism though, it's like a beautiful picture that doesn't have a frame. It's boundless in its simplicity. And it reminds us to let go of the human paraquat shit. Yep.
Get off the Train Lebowski
We can talk about Oneness, we can use our religion to right the wrongs of our psychological difficulties, we can talk endlessly about the Dao, about universal Love, about Buddha, and we can have fun dancing around trees at Beltane. But, this isn't a lot different than the commercial train that I mentioned in the previous post. It is instead, a religious train. And it can easily become another "me", another "how I should be".
Do I look good in these flowy pants? Does tie-and-dye suit me? Do you like my new organic Zafu cushion made from the pubic hair of Tibetan Yetis?
But Dudeism, although it can be like this if we try to emulate the Dude in the movies, Dudeism keeps it simple. And it's best to do that. Yeah, sure, buy a Pendleton or a T-shirt and see them as reminders. We are often facing a world of greedhead councils, look-at-me-and-subscribe content creators, arseholes with personal beef, stress head control freaks, and blah blah, - yes, we need a reminder, if not for ourselves, for the square community.
Take it easy, have a limber mind, and abide.
Or,
Having a limber mind means abiding becomes simple and you take life easy as a result.
No scripture study, chanting Buddhist mantras, walking around stupas, saying hail marys, bowing to the east, and no ego-spirituality.
And it works.
Here's to keeping things simple.
Rev. Thomo
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